A single-mode dynamical equation is obtained from the Maxwell equation with the slowly varying amplitude approximation and the boundary conditions of the cavity, here the mean field limir and the good quality cavity case have been used. This equation is useful in describing the dynamical behavior of intrinsic optical bistable systems and/or lasers with injected sig-nals for any kinds of materials including two-level atoms. Furthermore, according to the li-near stability analysis, a generalized instability criterion is derived.